Nick Knowles has confessed that his four-stone weight gain in lockdown led to him getting stuck in the Grand Canyon while filming a new show.
The 60-year-old’s weight increased to 18 stone during the height of the pandemic in March 2020, after the presenter stopped his fitness routine altogether to focus on writing.
While making his show The Grand Canyon on Channel 5, Knowles revealed that he got wedged in a crevice in a “terrifying” experience, and described the caved area as being built for “skinny people”.
The host told Radio X: “You have to go through ‘horizontal chimneys’ which are for real cavers, who are like whippets – they’re tiny, skinny people.
“But my director was like, ‘Go through here, and there’s a cave on the other side which we can talk in.’”
Knowles shared that he started to panic after realising he was stuck.
He said: “But halfway along, I was like, ‘I can’t do this, this is just too much’. I had palpitations, it was seriously terrifying.
“There was a point where I was wedged, I couldn’t get my shoulders through and I was wedged. My heart started to go and I was, ‘Breathe, breathe, breathe.’
“The caver said to me, ‘So how are you feeling about your life choices?’”
Knowles previously admitted to having “ate all the pies” in the first lockdown, and called himself “massive”, after bailing on exercising and healthy eating.
The presenter later received harsh comments from trolls after he appeared in a wetsuit for the DIY SOS Children in Need Special.
Speaking on his response to the cruel reactions, Knowles said: “I put on a lot of weight during the first lockdown. I couldn’t do any training, I was doing a lot of writing, a lot of banana bread and I grew a big beard and stayed in and I wrote a lot.
“So, when I came to do the shoot, I thought ‘I’ll tidy myself up’, and then actually no because so many people, not everybody, did the Joe Wicks thing, not everyone spends half their life in the gym.”
Knowles added: “Some people put on a lot of weight and I thought do you know what, first start of the show, let’s start with that straight away.”
